United States of America As Represented by the Administrator of Nasa

Swales Aerospace

Qian Gong

Neerav Shah

Douglas M Rabin

David A Content

Nelson Reginald

Joseph M Davila

Michael W McElwain

Avram Max Mandell

Phillip C Chamberlin

Tyler D Groff

Maxime J Rizzo

A lenslet based integral field spectrograph (IFS) may have a design that makes better use of the detector pixels by placing adjacent spectra next to each other rather than staggering the spectra. Such a design maintains the main compactness and simplicity of prior lenslet array based IFSs, but improves the detector efficiency, which is rather low in conventional lenslet array based IFSs.

Lenslet array based integral field spectrograph and data processing

The present invention relates to a space-based instrument which provides continuous coronal electron temperature and velocity images, for a predetermined period of time, thereby improving the understanding of coronal evolution and how the solar wind and Coronal Mass Ejection transients evolve from the low solar atmosphere through the heliosphere for an entire solar rotation. Specifically, the present invention relates to using a 6U spherical occulter coronagraph CubeSat, and a relative navigational system (RNS) that controls the position of the spacecraft relative to the occulting sphere. The present invention innovatively deploys a free-flying spherical occulter, and after deployment, the actively controlled CubeSat will provide an inertial formation flying with the spherical occulter and Sun.

Spherical occulter coronagraph cubesat

The present invention uses a light-pipe for beam splitting, combining, hybrid space-wavelength multiplexing, hybrid space-wavelength demultiplexing, dense wavelength division multiplexing, and dense wavelength division demultiplexing. A light-pipe has a first end where light enters the light-pipe and a second end where the light exits the light-pipe. The light-pipe is a polygonal rod or a hollow reflective cavity. To perform beam splitting, light enters the first end of the light-pipe and reflects off of the side surfaces inside the light-pipe producing additional light beams. By placing an imaging lens at the output end of the light-pipe, all of the virtual images (n-1) of the additional light beams and the original light entering the light-pipe become the object of the imaging lens. As a result, the light-pipe acts as a 1-to-n splitter. If the input signal, that is, the light entering the light-pipe, has more than one wavelength and a grating is added to the second end of the light-pipe, the device becomes a hybrid space-wavelength division multiplexer/demultiplexer. If the spacing between adjacent wavelengths is small, the light-pipe becomes a Dense Wavelength Division Demultiplexer. If the input and output are reversed, the beam splitter becomes a combiner. If the inputs have different wavelengths, the light-pipe becomes a Wavelength Division Multiplexer.

Apparatus for beam splitting, combining wavelength division multiplexing

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Columbia, MD, United States of America

Qian Gong